OAKLAND — Tanya Hill McCall probably felt safe as she walked through the parking lot of Acts Full Gospel Church last Sunday toward her weekly retreat inside the East Oakland church.

The two decades worth of abuse her husband, Matthew, allegedly had inflicted on her were coming to an end.

She had finally filed for divorce, left the house they shared and won a restraining order against him that ordered him to stay at least 100 yards away from her.

Yet, 20 minutes before she was to begin worship, police say she was gunned down by the man the law said should be nowhere near her.

How that came to be — despite her efforts to avoid it — is a question that has been asked for years in California.

For the most part, experts in the field say, restraining orders in domestic disputes help diffuse volatile situations. They give a victim another avenue to turn to should harassment and violence continue.

Police agencies are usually notified of restraining orders and if a violation of the order occurs, the perpetrator can be sent to jail for five days per violation.

The orders prevent a person from having a firearm and require police to make an arrest if an accusation of battering is made while the restraining order is in place.

“I have been asked this question a lot: Do restraining orders work?” said Cherri Allison, executive director of the Family Violence Law Center in Oakland. “In 90 percent of the cases, the situations have remained violence free.”

But, a restraining order puts all the burden on the victim.

The victim has to go to court to file the order and, until recently, had to deliver the order to every law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction where the victim lives and works. A state law changed that but problems still exist in ensuring every restraining order issued is entered into a state database.

The law was spurred by a California Attorney General study in 2005, which outlined the numerous problems associated with restraining orders. That report found that many laws surrounding restraining orders were not followed and that the cases were often handled by inexperienced prosecutors.

Just obtaining a restraining order also doesn’t guarantee a victim would be free of harassment.

With more than 3,000 restraining orders filed a year in Alameda County alone, it is impossible for every victim to have constant protection from the person they are trying to keep away.

As a result, the only way to stop harassment is to call the police every time a violation of the order occurs.

“Getting a restraining order is only the first step,” said Carolyn Russell, operations director for A Safe Place, an organization in Oakland that provides shelter to domestic violence victims. “Sometimes, the only option for the (victim) is to go into hiding.”

She said she advises clients to move if they’ve suffered a long history of abuse from a partner or spouse or if they know the person would not follow the order.

Her advice includes having the person change daily routines and stop frequenting places they had in the past.

“Sometimes women know it will not work,” she said.

Hill McCall appeared to have known an order would not offer full protection. After filing for divorce, she moved to a home in Vallejo her husband did not know about.

However, she refused to eliminate one of the most important parts of her life, her faith.

Hill McCall continued to attend church despite the threats her husband had made against her.

“Maybe, in this case, it would have been good to advise this woman not to go to church for a while,” Allison said. “Then again, there are cases that no matter what you do, there is nothing that can be done to prevent the violence.”